Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
thugs and soldiers, Chiang organised a lightning strike by rounding up CCP
activists and union leaders in Shanghai and killing thousands of them.
Chiang Kaishek's Kuomintang government officially came to power in 1928
through a combination of military force and popular support. Marked by corrup-
tion, it ruthlessly suppressed political dissent. Yet Chiang's government also
kick-started a major industrialisation effort, greatly augmented China's trans-
port infrastructure, and successfully renegotiated what many Chinese called
'unequal treaties' with Western powers.
A major centre of CCP activity was the base area in impoverished Jiangxi
province. However, by 1934, Chiang's previously ineffective 'Extermination
Campaigns' were making the CCP's position in Jiangxi untenable. The CCP
commenced their Long March, travelling over 6400km. Four thousand of the
original 80,000 communists who set out eventually arrived, exhausted, in
Shaanxi (Shanxi) province in the northwest.
Events came to a head in December 1936, when the militarist leader of
Manchuria (General Zhang Xueliang) and the CCP kidnapped Chiang. As a
condition of his release, Chiang agreed to an openly declared United Front:
the Kuomintang and communists would put aside their differences and join
forces against Japan.
War & the Kuomintang
The Japanese invasion of China, which
began in 1937, was merciless, with the
notorious Nanjing Massacre just one of
a series of war crimes committed by the
Japanese Army. The government had to
operate in exile from the far southwest-
ern hinterland of China as its eastern
seaboard was lost to Japanese occupa-
tion.
In China itself, it is now acknowledged
that both the Kuomintang and the com-
munists had important roles to play in
defeating Japan. Chiang, not Mao Ze-
Foreign Concessions
& Colonies
1 SHANGHAI, FRENCH
CONCESSION,
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